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On the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II, the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence has organized an international and interdisciplinary meeting. By bringing together key innovative specialists in philosophy, political science, law and history, the conference intends to reflect on the definition and role of civilians during mass violence. Civilians are understood here as victims of bombing or as actors resisting to ground-based mass violence. The meeting focuses on World War II as a touchstone period but also tries to assess its role in the longue durée up to the present. It takes the term “world war” literally, with special emphasis on the Asian continent, aiming at the opening of new horizons leading to more globally oriented research.

Annonce

Presentation

On the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II, the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence has organized an international and interdisciplinary meeting.

By bringing together key innovative specialists in philosophy, political science, law and history, the conference intends to reflect on the definition and role of civilians during mass violence. Civilians are understood here as victims of bombing or as actors resisting to ground-based mass violence.

The meeting focuses on World War II as a touchstone period but also tries to assess its role in the longue durée up to the present. It takes the term “world war” literally, with special emphasis on the Asian continent, aiming at the opening of new horizons leading to more globally oriented research.

Program

16th December 2015

4:00 pm OPENING SESSION

Welcome address: Frédéric Mion, President of Sciences Po

Opening remarks : Claire Andrieu, Sciences Po-Centre d’histoire

Roundtable on films Shina No Yoru(1940) and The Bridge on the River Kwai(1957)

17th December 2015

The Bombing Of Civilians, Policyandpractice In Comparative Perspective

Convenors: C. Andrieu, A. Colonomos, E.Maïlander

The aim is to analyze the evolution of the policies and practices of civilian bombing as well as of the international standards regarding them. Political scientists and philosophers will question international humanitarian law and the ethical dilemmas raised by aerial bombings. Historians will provide case studies that offer new perspectives and highlight the diversity and changes in historical approaches to the ongoing debate.

International law has long evinced interest in standards to apply to the use of aerial bombing. This debate has intensified since the 1990s. Several issues have emerged. Are the rules of proportionality and distinction better applied today than in the past? What is a practical definition of proportionality in current conflicts? Does technological progress in accuracy of targeting reflects a moral criterion or is it rather the result of tactical efficiency?

The historical approaches will provide both a retrospective and comparative view. The goal is to examine the evolution of analysis over the past seventy years and to highlight the shift of the debate in the social sciences across the international contexts of postwar, cold war, and post-cold war as well as in the various national political contexts since 1945.

National experiences of bombing have shaped the different historical accounts in legal analyses and in the international order. For instance, the United States, which most consistently resorted to heavy bombardment (not only during World War II but also subsequently in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya), is also the country in which historians seem seldom to agree, at least in the 1995 controversy around the Enola Gay exhibition. In contrast, France has remained until recently relatively uninterested in examining the history of German and Allied bombings of the country. The situation is changing, however, as scholars begin to apply the compassionate approach developed in the cases of German and Japanese civilians to the French case. These differences in national histories and historiographies of civilian bombing are one focus of this conference.

Panel 3: Civilian Bombings In National History And Memory

Bas von Benda-Beckmann, University of Amsterdam: Two German Historical Perspectives: the Allied Bombardments of Germany and Luftwaffe Bombardments of the West

Yuki Tanaka, Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City University: Juxtaposing the Atomic Bombing and Japanese War Atrocities

Andrew Knapp, Reading University: The Horror and the Glory: Bomber Command in British Memories since 1945

Discussant: Claire Andrieu, Sciences Po-Centre d’histoire

4:30 pm

Panel 4: World War Ii Bombings In Comparative Perspective

Moderator: Karoline Postel-Vinay, Sciences Po-CERI

Speakers:

Sheldon Garon, Princeton University: Defending Civilians against Aerial Bombardment: A Transnational History of Japanese, German, and British Home Fronts, 1918-1945

Mark Selden, Cornell University: Comparative Reflections on Japanese and American Bombings in the Pacific

Jennifer Evans, Carleton University: Searching for Normality in Abnormal times in Pre- and Post-1945 Berlin

Discussant: Mario del Pero, Sciences Po-Centre d’histoire

18th December 2015

Local Resistance To Mass Violence In Asia And Europe

Convenors: C. Andrieu, A. Doglia

Comparisons between European and Asian patterns of war and violence can contribute to new understandings of these issues. With Japan’s empire as its focus, the conference seeks to develop analytical methodologies and comparative approaches to local, grassroots resistance to mass violence.

In contrast to the voluminous literature on resistance in France and Italy and on Chinese military resistance to the Japanese invasion, there is relatively little scholarly work on local resistance to wartime occupation in Asia. Will the understanding of resistance in occupied Europe also apply to Asia under Japanese domination? And how did the experience differ in colonized nations like Indochina and sovereign nations like China?

The task is also to investigate possible patterns of resistance. Although by now the study of those who stood against genocide is well established, civil opposition to other types of mass violence is less well treated. A study of civil opposition to mass violence may help to identify patterns of unarmed civil resistance and provoke more research to local resistance even under brutal wartime occupation regimes.

9:30 am

Panel 5: Local Resistance To Mass Violence As A Topic Of Research

Moderator: Jean-Marc Dreyfus, University of Manchester

Speakers:

Claire Andrieu, Sciences Po-Centre d’histoire, Constructing and Rebuilding an Archetype: from 1940 to the Present

Joachim Scholtyseck, University of Bonn, John Rabe: Nankin-Berlin 1937-1945, from Rescue to Inaction

Discussant: Elissa Mailänder, Sciences Po-Centre d’histoire

11:15 am

Panel 6: Local Resistance To Mass Violence In Sovereign Nations

Moderator:Michael Lucken, INALCO, Paris

Speakers:

Arnaud Doglia, University of Cambridge: Resistance in Japan, 1931-1945

Rana Mitter, Oxford University:Refugee Flight, Collaboration and Resistance to Japanese Occupation in the Initial Phase of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-38

Masha Cerovic, Centre d’études franco-russes de Moscou: The People’s War: Insurgency and Civil War in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union, 1941-1944

Discussant: Sheldon Garon, Princeton University

2:30 pm

Panel 7: Local Resistance To Mass Violence In Colonial Asia

Moderator: Alain Delissen, EHESS, Paris

Speakers:

Celine Marangé, Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM), French Ministry of Defense: Vietnamese Communists and the Japanese Occupation of Indochina, 1940-1945

Remco Raben, University of Amsterdam & Utrecht University: Local Resistance to Japanese Occupation in Indonesia